Upthread in my discussion with monsterer, I mentioned that I thought I could solve the problems Satoshi's Proof-of-Work by crediting all block solutions instead of the just the first one that arrives. When I went quiet on Jan 3, it was because I realized my design was faulty because there would still be an ambiguity around when the block solutions to be credited were propagated. I was trying to rush out a first iteration when while programming, I realized the detail that wasn't clear to me before.
I went off on several days of just thinking all day. I contemplated all the possible designs (including Iota's DAG, Lightning Networks, DPOS, Proof-of-Stake, Masternodes, Raiblocks/Blocklattice, etc), and I can't think of any design that uses a block chain or a DAG (or any other form of determining the longest chain of truth) which doesn't either centralize (factoring in society's ability to regulate the consistent partition) or diverge into inconsistent truths. Due to the CAP theorem it is fundamentally impossible for there to exist any block chain or consistent DAG design that won't centralize (even without regulation once you require scaling). Worse yet, it is impossible to attain any sort of end-to-end principled, decentralized scaling of transaction processing, because consistency is lost without centralization (even Proof-of-Work centralizes economically due to the Power Law distribution of capital).
The CAP theorem is fundamental. There will be no way to solve it. You all can spend the next 1000 years fooling yourself will all sorts of designs, but they will also end up either inconsistent or centralized or unable to scale. PERIOD. PERIOD.
I realized that Bitcoin and everything else so far is destined for failure. We are only mining each other here. We are not producing any fundamental breakthrough on the problem of decentralized electronic money. I do not like to work on things that I feel are misdirected and destined for failure in the end. I don't want to get rich by fooling other people (or fooling myself). All of you including the core Bitcoin developers are fooling themselves. I've been through all the designs. It is fundamental. There won't be any solution in any of the directions being pursued by any of the current and upcoming crypto projects. It is all delusional bullshit.
I felt rather hopeless about this, and so spent a few days thinking about other potential directions for my life, work, etc..
After all that, I decided the only way to get a breakthrough on electronic money is to admit the CAP theorem and decide which of the three, Consistency, Access, Partitioning to forsake in a design. Bitcoin can't tolerate any Partitioning, thus Access is and will be centrally controlled. Iota allows Partitioning and thus forsakes Consistency (watch it blow up).
Specifically Iota forsakes Consistency in a very chaotic way, where there can be multiple Partitions of truths and so no one will know which truth is valid. Or they will have to centralize to force a consistent truth.
I decided the only way forward for electronic money is to sacrifice Consistency thus allowing unlimited Partitions but in a way that maintains one truth without centralization by forsaking Bitcoin's irreversible transactions principle.
Thus (if I don't find another flaw besides the forsaking irreversibility principle) the real solution for electronic money is decentralizing chargebacks. Note that businesses cope quite well with chargebacks. They just alocate a certain % of their costs to chargeback costs. The key is for there to be a penalization mechanism so that chargebacks are not unbounded.
The gain is a bearer coin design, so unlimited transaction rate. And no one can prevent any one from spending their money.
There is a lot more details to cover, but I will go quiet and be working on this.
You're on the right track.
People are looking in the wrong places for a solution and I've said many times that CAP theorem is the killer of all current solutions (including BTC) and is the bane of all future ones...furthermore all POW based block chains are not even Byzantine tolerant, which makes them partition intolerant also, as an exotic 51% attack can change history and thus create unresolvable partitions...alas no one listens so I leave them to it.
Sacrificing consistency and allowing unlimited partitions indefinitely, yet trying to keep all partitions in line with a common truth without centralization will be a nightmare, if not impossible.
That doesn't mean you are off the mark though, you are simply making the mistake everyone has made so far and concentrating too much on only one aspect of CAP. Look at it holistically, you can sacrifice all CAP components for a period of time to some degree and still keep consensus truth in the long term. This thinking is what forms the basic foundation of theory for my channeled ledger design.
By splitting the whole truth (the ledger), into sub-truths (groups of channels and the channels themselves) you can have varying states of the full truth present in the network at any one time. This is ok as the channeled nature of the ledger doesn't require that the whole truth ever be known by all actors, only the sub-truth that relates to that a specific channel of interest and the transactions within it. Further more, transactions are 2 stage, so the spend is decoupled from the claim and they live in different channels from each other, most likely within a different group.
Transactional activity within the network only ever touches 1 channel and ONLY influences the state of that channel. In block chain and to some degree tangle based designs, a block or a single transaction influences the entire state of the ledger/transactions, defines which transactions across the entire domain are legal and can make previously legal transactions now illegal.
What does this mean? It means that a channeled ledger design can take liberties across all CAP components for a period of time and still be true for all actions because all channels are independent from each other.
For example, Alice makes a payment to Bob and this payment is made from channel 15 in group 1. Bob's channel is 23 in group 257. Bob's channel and its group can be completely inaccessible within the entire network for whatever reason and Alice's payment to him will still validate, channel 15 and group 1 remain as a valid truth regardless of the state of group 257 or Bob's channel. Even with access to group 257 and the channels within it completely unavailable, Bob will be unaware of the transaction Alice just made and the state of his channel will be unchanged, thus the whole truth holds.
The same works in reverse, Bob can make payments to Alice, and it will validate, even though he is only able to access group 257. His actions do not violate the truth of his channel or his group because it doesnt influence any channels or groups external to his.
Therefore the network can be in a partitioned state for a period of time, with access limitations and consistency issues yet still be true as a whole.
Hopefully that makes sense
